When you see the White House on the evening news, have you ever wondered about the men who built it?

Most were slaves, including the children who mixed clay, sand and water to make the bricks. Imagine what those people would have thought if they could have known that one day, a mixed-race man would become President[3].

Not all the workers were slaves. Many were immigrants, and some were emancipated African-Americans.

But many were supplied by slave owners from Virginia and Maryland, who received $5 monthly[4] for each slave they loaned to the project.

The slaves who worked on the original White House — it was burned by the British in the War of 1812 — were lucky in one respect: Skilled craftsmen taught many of them how to build cabinets and do elite carpentry.